Marketing Mania: The North Face

Ever wandered into a sporting goods store and wondered how this 16-foot, inflatable raft will hold up against the aggressive Kaweah River? Or if this pro-series baseball glove will catch the winning ball at the Giants game? Wouldn’t it be great if you can test to see how these equipment would actually perform as if you were out there partaking in the sport?

Well, too bad. There is no way to bring miles of river or a massive stadium into retail store. However, it is possible to give customers a small taste of the sport through clever use of moving walls, realistic environment simulation, and of course, a great marketing story.

American outdoor equipment company, The North Face, popular for their fleece jackets and backpacks, teamed up with South Korean ad agency Innored to create a virtual mountain climbing adventure for shoppers, with a free North Face jacket at stake to win.

Lets walk through the experience together. You walk into The North Face pop-up store at the mall, thinking that it’s the time of year again to upgrade to modern and more insulated sports jacket. It’s a pretty cool looking room; each side of the wall is painted like the blue sky with fluffy clouds, and there is even a rock-climbing wall on one side.

As you shift through the racks of jackets and sweaters, all of a sudden, the floor behind you begins to move, retracting all the way to one end of the room so now you are forced to scale the rock-climbing wall just to stay afloat.

Then, a brand new, perfectly puffy jacket descends from the heavens (the ceiling) and a screen flashes before you, telling you that you have a total of 30 seconds to leap into the air and grab the jacket then land onto a air mattress below … or else.

So what would you do now, Agent 007? Do you take a leap to secure the prize or suffer the consequences of leaving the store empty-handed? Well, as seen in the ad that has gone viral this past week, almost everyone took that leap of faith.

It is always fun when you get a small taste of adventure when you least expect it. In this case, shoppers get to experience themselves in a mini-action film.